Wallpapering a high wall? Choose the right scaffold.

For papering indoors you arrive at the Altrex RS44. That room scaffold makes 3 to 4 metres and goes in separate parts through an interior door of about 70 cm wide, so you get it into the living room, into the stairwell and alongside a void. More important than the height is that the frame stays compact, because you have to shunt it along per length while a pasting table stands in the same room. The details are on the page about room scaffolds for hire.

A deck 245 cm long is precisely the right measure for papering. Four to five lengths fit side by side within that reach, so you hang a fair stretch of wall before you have to move. At the same time you need that length in order to turn with a piece that is already stuck at the top and still hanging loose at the bottom. On a small stool you would simply be pinned in place by a limp length like that.

An outdoor frame on large castors is no alternative here. It will not come down the hall, it stands too far off the wall, and it keeps you from getting close enough to the seam. The other way round, a single ladder is too cramped: you need both hands, you have to be able to step sideways, and there is no room for a brush, a seam roller and a knife. Which type suits indoors is set out in the comparison between the two.

On papering you measure to the line where the length ends: the junction with the ceiling, with a coving or with a beam. That point settles both the length you cut to and the build you reserve. In a living room with a raised ceiling or in a stairwell you come out at 3 to 4 metres. The working height you specify is your platform height plus roughly two metres of standing reach. See what an build to four metres means in practice.

Take the wall at several places, because old houses are seldom true and a difference of two centimetres shows immediately at a seam. Measure from the floor the scaffold will genuinely stand on, too. In a stairwell or beside a void one of the four legs sometimes rests on a stair tread, and then your figure on that side no longer matches the rest of the room. Note both heights separately and work with the lower one.

Stand too low while papering and you are reaching with straight arms for the top edge with a wet length in your grip. The length then sags, it sticks on skew, and you will never get it off again cleanly. Rather take a build on the roomy side than a tight one; it costs you a few extra minutes of assembly at most. For a wall carrying on across two storeys, look at a wall reaching the first floor.

Where the scaffold goes is tied to the seam on this job. Put it so that the first length of a run sits flat in front of you and not just behind an upright, because then you are reaching at the very moment it has to be exact. Work out beforehand where the seams fall, start at a window or in a corner, and mark a plumb line in pencil. Only after that do you roll the hired frame into place and lock the castors.

Under the castors on papering work there is nearly always a vulnerable floor, and paste that gets everywhere is part of the deal. So lay hardboard or heavy sheeting over the whole strip first, and carry it through to where the pasting table stands. Paste that dries between two boards never comes out again, and a small wheel presses itself into a soft floor. How to handle floors and thresholds indoors is described in this piece on indoor work with a scaffold.

Keep room beside the scaffold for the pasting table, a bucket of paste and the roll still to be cut. That table is soon two metres long and has to stand where you can get at it without walking round. So clear the room out past the last length of that day. Take everything off the wall as well, down to the screws of a coving, before the hired pitch is in front of it and you can no longer reach.

Papering costs more days than people reckon, and that is down to the preparation. Steaming old paper off, washing residues of adhesive away, filling holes, sanding and sizing all happen at height too, so you need the pitch before the first roll is even opened. For a high wall in a living room or a stairwell that brings you to two or three days of hire, in which the actual papering often does not fill half the time. Working alone, add half a day.

On top of that comes waiting. A coat of size has to dry before you hang paper on it, and on a freshly plastered wall that takes longer than on old work. The room itself plays in as well: in a cold, damp space nothing cures and seams open up again instead. So ventilate steadily, but keep a heater off the wall. All that while the room scaffold stays where it stands, because measuring and lining up afresh costs more time than an extra day of rental.

That extra day is cheap, after all. Only the first twenty four hours carry the full rate; every rental day beyond it is charged with 95 per cent taken off. Carrying on until you are genuinely finished therefore hardly registers on the bill and saves a great deal of hurry. Booking too short is the unpleasant version: two lengths still to go with the van at the door. Read the make up of the costs calmly on the page of rental prices, well before you settle your dates.

Cut the lengths to size below, with some over at both ends, and fold them double on the pasting table with the wet faces together. That way you carry a four metre length up without it sticking to anything. Up top you unfold only the upper part, set the edge against the ceiling line and let the rest drop down the wall. From a deck of 245 cm you have length enough to make a half turn while doing it.

Work with two people by preference: one up on the room scaffold and one below who guides the length and trims the bottom edge. The person above handles the lining up and the pressing home of the first fifty centimetres, and that is the part everything hangs on. If it runs skew there, the whole metre length beneath it is wrung out of true. Push the air out from the middle with a broad brush before you work further down, or you keep bubbles under the length.

You hang four to five lengths per pitch. Only then do you move: set the bucket on the floor, release the brakes, shunt the scaffold on to the next pencil line and brake it again. Carry up with you only what you can hold in your two hands, because every trip back down costs you exactly the minutes in which the paste is starting to grab. More on tackling large faces is on the page about hanging wallpaper on walls.

The scaffold reaches your door as a collection of loose, counted parts. For indoor work that suits you, since it lets you carry it through the hall in pieces without knocking a door post. Pick a spot in the hall or in an adjoining room to lay the parts down, and not in the space where the pasting table has to go. Reserve on a working day, before 15:00 has gone, and your set travels out to you the working day that follows.

Both the day of the delivery and the day of the return trip are yours to choose. On papering work you would rather have the parts arrive on the day you strip the old paper off, so you can use the build straight away for steaming and sanding. Assembly remains work for yourself; paper instructions come with it and footage of the right sequence is online. Between two of you, you are usually standing on the deck within the hour.

Once the paper is up and dry you take the room scaffold apart and carry the parts back to the hall, where we collect them on the agreed day. Hold off dismantling until the seams have closed, because a frame scraping past a fresh length costs you a whole roll. The price for bringing it and taking it away again varies by province; you will find those amounts under the tariffs for delivery and collection, so you can reckon in advance.

A platform in load class 3 will take some 200 kg per square metre under the standard EN 1004. On wallpapering you are quickly done with that, unless the two of you go up together with a bucket of paste between you. That happens more often than you would think, for instance when somebody comes to help press a difficult seam home. Add up what is genuinely up there before you both walk to the same corner. More on capacity is in the explanation of loading.

The fixed rules do not change indoors. Brake the castors before you take the first rung, climb up on the inside, and never roll the scaffold a little way with a person or a bucket on top. That last is a real temptation while papering, because after each run of lengths you want just that half metre of shift. Step off, move it, brake, and then climb again. At every new spot check that the four stabilisers stand firm.

The risk that belongs here is going slippery. Paste dripping off a length or falling from your brush leaves a smear on the deck boards where your shoe skates away, and it barely shows because it is transparent. Wipe it off at once and keep a dry cloth up top within reach. Think of the people below you too, because a trimmed strip of paper is wet and heavy and drops without warning. The rules are listed at work at height.